


Unvirginity

by DjaqtheRipper



Category: The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Genre: F/M, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Stream of Consciousness, non-explicit reference to violence and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 07:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1932348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjaqtheRipper/pseuds/DjaqtheRipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why isn’t it simple?” Vocalizing this question is impulsive, but Father isn’t here and Shreve is. Shreve might even know, as blood runs high in young men, as Shreve isn’t a Compson, doomed by the name we carry. The dark is still, the silence more pregnant for its brief reprieve. Shreve turns and the moon is in his eyes.<br/>“Why isn’t what simple?” Tone neutral, avoiding declaration of war, avoiding damage to a landscape still aching from my grandfather’s error. Those eyes hidden behind glowing feminine mystique.<br/>“Unvirginity.” I feel the blood across my cheeks and am grateful that he can’t see it. The shifting of bedclothes. Stiff words stiff lips stiff spine, hands clenching and unclenching.<br/>“Unvirginity,” he repeats, as if tasting the phrase. I stare blindly at the ceiling, keep my itching fingers still and quiet like dead moths. Shreve swallows and I hear the wet squelch of his throat.<br/>“It seemed pretty simple to me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unvirginity

The metal is cold on my fumbling fingers, funny how when you’re sitting down and her blood or my blood her heart beating slow and deep and dying, dying for him, not for me, and I was there, I was there in the dark like the nigger women do and the damn honeysuckle cloying like old rot, like Nancys bones too long unseen and when He says Rise, nothing remaining in the churning inviolate sand-  
I wake with a start in the Massachusetts cold, find the air not sweet but reeking with the musk of vines creeping. My chest is a bellows, breath coursing in and out, heart fluttering like the wings of a trapped moth, living like dying, and all the reducto absurdum of the human experience in countless breaths pouring from my body, in numbered flutters of the damned.   
“Quentin.” Shreve says, his fat hand warm on my forehead against the Massachusetts cold she was not cold not warm against my knife where it didn’t press hard enough, her blood or my blood, one and the same and can we help being cursed left behind from when he woke me.  
“What time is it?” The shadows of the moon are elongated and fiercely hungry, stretched into something shallow and bold, inherently dishonest, the moon is woman’s domain, in all its faceless mysteries, globes of flesh and between them the damned honeysuckle her dress billowing in the branch the violet of the moon and the honeysuckle  
“Dunno. Late.” He flips his hand so the less fleshy back of it sticks in the sweat on my forehead. “You don’t have a temperature.”  
“I’m not sick,” but my heart pounds, my pulse pounds in my temple under Shreve’s hand.  
“Well, you hardly seem well, with all that thrashing and moaning.” His hand is gone and I am alone in the moon shadows once more, the domain of women with their propensity for evil.  
“Just a dream.” I lay back against the pillows. My eyes have adjusted to the dark and you can shirk anything. can you Father said There’s warmth emanating from my side and I catch the reflected flash of Shreve’s glasses like twin moons, close enough to touch and never hit a man in the glasses Whooey sasparilla Ive got to marry somebody I cannot bring myself to reach out and catch the reflected light, cup it between my hands. But he murmurs, “Tell me,” and lays down where the light won’t catch and the shadows have us both, the bedclothes white and clean when my eyes have adjusted.  
“Just a dream,” I say, unwilling to lay this depravity bare. He’s seen me weak but he’s never seen me cry. Let this at least remain unsullied. My throat is tight around the swallowed words, choking on Father I said I have committed and the clean flame the three of us together damned do you love him now all the things I wish I’d been able to leave in Mississippi.   
“You’re awake now,” he soothes, consonants sharpened into weapons by hard northern tongue Nancys bones gone picked clean and all that remains on the inviolate sand and then there is his fat hand on my hand, warm and sure and steady. Why can’t I be unvirgin instead and dance sitting down did you ever did you ever her blood or my blood Brothers in arms talking about old Harvard and his hand presses mine under the white bedclothes, benediction, even though he has no idea what sins he thinks he forgives Father I said I have committed and there was something terrible in me something terrible Quentin has shot voices through the floor   
“Quentin,” his voice presses more firmly than his hand. I am drowning even now and when He says rise all that would come up would be   
“Quentin,” his other hand against my cheek, against yesterday’s shave, and there is a question here. Breathing like a bellows and that damn honeysuckle in my breathing face against the dirt you used to like it my heart pounding fast, the blood pushing through my veins I’m bad anyway you cant help it and I can’t answer Shreve’s question. His glasses glint like the eyes of something predatory, even though his hands are soft, declawed. Then they’re gone, and I can feel the absence in the cold Massachusetts air where there are no warm nights poisoned with honeysuckle. Suddenly, his hands on my back, his chin tucked over my shoulder, the warmth that is his body close and fast around me though I am taller. Men don’t hug. Men don’t hug through the bedclothes in the cold cold night where flesh is just warmth and skin melts into skin the reducto absurdum of the human experience amen.   
“Calm down. Okay?” I should not be granted this protection- it chafes some close held instinct. half baked Galahad of a The closeness forces my breath to slow, lest my expanding lungs press against his expanding lungs. The air is sharp through my nose. The shadows reveal nothing so I count breaths, count five of them slowly before he pulls back, lets me fall back onto the pillow like a dead thing.  
“I’m sorry,” I say into the darkness. Shreve’s glasses have stopped glinting and I can’t feel him anymore. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” The bedclothes rustle, whisper of a shrug I can’t see.  
“I’ll have plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead” only the two of us if only we could have done so awful you can shirk anything can you can you  
“Must have been a hell of a dream,” his voice low, letting me in on the joke. I laugh once, shaky, and it splits the night, splits the silence. I sit up, feel my nightclothes stick to the sweat of my back as I reach for my watch. The hour is marked plainly but I don’t see it. I put the watch away. what time is it hands jerking into the silence I don’t know her flank, the water sending her skirt billowing, the lights still on the light still on we can cancel my matriculation where no one knows us I promise  
Shreve doesn’t retreat to his bed with the unspoken agreement that all memories of our disturbed sleep vanish with first light. His silence is expectant sick how are you and he fills it by picking up the watch, letting the chain slip through his big hand, an infinite hourglass, time looping back on itself so that you pass the same links again and again. Strong enough to carry her away like a child running running the beast with two backs one shadow if it isn’t anything then what am I  
“Why isn’t it simple?” Vocalizing this question is impulsive, but Father isn’t here and Shreve is. Shreve might even know, as blood runs high in young men, as Shreve isn’t a Compson, doomed by the name we carry. The dark is still, the silence more pregnant for its brief reprieve. Shreve turns and the moon is in his eyes.  
“Why isn’t what simple?” Tone neutral, avoiding declaration of war, avoiding damage to a landscape still aching from my grandfather’s error. Those eyes hidden behind glowing feminine mystique.  
“Unvirginity.” I feel the blood across my cheeks and am grateful that he can’t see it. The shifting of bedclothes. Stiff words stiff lips stiff spine, hands clenching and unclenching.  
“Unvirginity,” he repeats, as if tasting the phrase. I stare blindly at the ceiling, keep my itching fingers still and quiet like dead moths. Shreve swallows and I hear the wet squelch of his throat.  
“It seemed pretty simple to me.” Then he is still. I wonder if his hands are like dead moths too. I breathe five times. What am I then what am I why could it be me and not her who is  
“Show me.” My chest constricts as though to prevent my request from being carried out. Poor Quentin poor Quentin I hate him love him every time this goes poor Quentin don’t say Im crying did you say  
“Do you know what you’re asking?” His voice is flushed, I can hear his heart pound his blood beneath his skin. “You must still be asleep.” Poor Quentin poor Quentin He moves to stand, sending bedsprings into expansion. I catch the hand he’d thoughtlessly abandoned by my side. I feel his fingers twitch under my bones as if to clutch back. Poor Quentin poor Quentin you’ve never you’ve never done why must it be her and not I who is  
“I know what I’m asking.” My blood against his blood, our hands suspended, caught in time as if time itself knows the weight of the moment and has conceded it to the breathless land between the word and the deed, between the intention and the action itself. Then Shreve exhales and the moment is shattered and resuccumbs to the ticking of mechanical hands, to the inevitable winding away into the reducto absurdum of the human experience, blurred into unscrutibility but never forgotten.  
“Show you.”   
“Yes,” I say. “I need to know.”  
“Need to know what its like.” He sighs. “Yeah. I felt the same way, the first time I…” The springs loudly protest their contraction as he climbs back into bed. The sheets pull taught as he tries to fit two grown men into the narrow space. His skin is warm where it touches mine, the wrists, the ankles, points of crucifixion pierced with warmth. He smells of soap and something indistinguishably male that prevents me from imagining he’s someone else. Roses the smell of. Honeysuckle poor Quentin poor Quentin   
His fingers shake, but mine are steady as I act with all the solemnity of last rites. You cant make me theres a curse on us I’m grateful for the darkness, the blindness that lets the feeling of flesh be anonymous, the shape of his body less unsettling. her flank her cold hard breast her heels to God The mind is weak but the flesh is willing. Familiar pressure builds unfamiliarly and when the tension breaks the name on my tongue is not his. He does not seem to notice. Do you love him do you Ive died for him When it is over I hold him the way I’d always expected to hold the woman I loved. Hold her in her rowing arms like the bird suspended running running on his shoulder The soft pressure of skin against skin damns me further, forces me to understand that all that has been accomplished tonight is the exchange of one depravity for another. Did you ever have a half baked Galahad of a did you did you Shreve kisses me once, the scratch of yesterday’s shave, before he falls into sleep, leaving me alone. Don’t say Im crying did you say I  
As the sweat cools on our bodies I wait in the silence of the room to feel a change. I wait to feel different, somehow. I wait in the quiet for understanding that doesn’t come.  
My father was right.  
I need to laugh, feel it bubbling up in my throat like bile, but force myself to contain it, lest I wake Shreve again. The retching ache of subdued laughter builds in my chest, behind my eyes, until something in it shifts and instead I’m crying. I can’t stop. At some point he rolls over in his sleep, pulls me to him. I don’t fight it. His body is warm, and soft, and his face is peaceful, but they are of no comfort. He holds me like a girl and I begin to think of which books to return and which to leave out, of what needs to be said in the letters I’m going to write, but mostly I think of the flat irons.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for all the pretension. Faulkner can get away with it, but I'm not Faulkner.


End file.
